Michigan
lost $2.5 billion in income from 2007 to 2008 as people migrated out of the
state, trailing only California ($4 billion) and New York ($2.52 billion) in
lost income, according to a calculation by The Tax Foundation.

The
Tax Foundation, a non-profit, non-partisan educational organization in
Washington D.C., provides a "migration
calculator" that can track where people are moving and taking their
paychecks with them.

The
data comes from the IRS and its Statistics of Income division, according to The
Tax Foundation. The migration data uses IRS tax returns from each
year and includes social security numbers. That allows the IRS to track
movement of taxpayers as well as income.

The
calculation also shows that the top ten states hit the hardest in terms of
gross lost income were all forced-unionization states. Yet, nine of the 12 states that
showed the largest growth in income were right-to-work states. The
National Right To Work Legal Defense Foundation defines states as right-to-work
if the law guarantees that no person can be
forced, as a condition of employment, to join or not to join, nor to pay
dues to a labor union.

"This
just says workers and all Americans are voting with their feet for states that
respect the worker's freedom not to join and pay dues to union officials just
to keep their jobs," said Patrick Semmens, the director of legal information at
the National Right To Work Legal Defense Foundation. "Americans want to work to
get paid not to pay union bosses to get work."

Southern
states were the biggest winners in attracting income. Florida had the biggest
increase with $4.5 billion in added income and Texas was second at $2.8
billion.

"These
results show that right-to-work is a great attraction to employers, and with
that, good paying jobs," wrote Paul Kersey, director of the labor policy at the
Mackinac Center For Public Policy, in an e-mail. "It's time we faced up
to the fact that the union movement in Michigan has become a
destructive force badly in need of accountability and
discipline. Right-to-work is the best way to make unions accountable to
the workers they exist to represent."